Donor Messages Using Emotional Data

In this episode, Delaney interviews Grant Gooding, an expert in measuring people and utilizing emotional data for effective donor messaging in the nonprofit sector. Grant is also the Founder & CEO of Proof Positioning.

Grant shares his key lessons from ten years of experience in measuring emotions, emphasizing the importance of understanding and leveraging emotional insights.

Grant begins by explaining market research and its relevance to the nonprofit sector. He highlights how market research helps organizations understand their target audience, identify their needs, and tailor their messaging. Nonprofits can effectively communicate with the right people and drive engagement.

The conversation then dives into how nonprofits can ensure they say the right things to the right people. Grant emphasizes leveraging emotional data to resonate with donors and other supporters.

Moreover, Grant provides insights on striking the right balance in clear communication. He advises nonprofits to be strategic and mindful of their communication frequency, ensuring they provide value to their connections without overwhelming them. By focusing on quality rather than quantity, nonprofits can maintain meaningful relationships with their supporters.

Grant Gooding FOUNDER & CEO | PROOF Positioning

Grant got his professional start in the mergers and acquisitions world working first on the legal side then buy-side analysis, valuations, and eventually transition management. After roughly a decade of analyzing, valuing and transitioning hundreds of small and mid-market businesses, Grant naturally gravitated towards understanding the 70% failure rates of acquisitions.

After years of analyzing acquisition failures, he discovered the leading cause of transaction failures was a lack of understanding and measurement as to why customers do business with organizations.

With his MBA emphasis in qualitative marketing, Grant spent the next several years experimenting with methodologies and measurement techniques that could be used to quantify qualitative data.  After working with a nationally renowned brand analyst, Grant discovered a quant method that could be used to assess brand preferences. With that as a starting point, he and his team utilized some principles of neuroscience and created a new methodology that accurately quantifies emotional resonance.

After several hundred iterations, the PROOF method is one of the most compelling and accurate ways to quantify human emotion.  Today, Grant speaks all over the country in the areas of Emotional Data, an emerging field that PROOF is helping pioneer.